LOS ANGELES – Tom Poston, the tall, pasty-faced comic who found fame and fortune playing a clueless everyman on hit television shows such as “Newhart” and “Mork and Mindy,” has died. He was 85.
Poston died Monday night at home after a brief illness, a family representative, Tanner Gibson, said Tuesday.
Poston’s run as a comic bumbler began in the mid-1950s with “The Steve Allen Show” after Allen plucked the character actor from the Broadway stage to join an ensemble of eccentrics with whom he would conduct “man in the street” interviews. Poston won an Emmy playing “The Man Who Can’t Remember His Name.”
Later, on “Mork and Mindy,” Poston was Franklin Delano Bickley, the mindless boozer with the annoying dog. On “Newhart,” he was George Utley, the handyman who couldn’t fix anything.
LOS ANGELES – Zola Taylor, who broke gender barriers in the 1950s as a member of The Platters, harmonizing with her male colleagues on hits such as “The Great Pretender,” has died, her nephew said Tuesday. She was 69.
She had been bedridden following several strokes and died Monday at Parkview Community Hospital in Riverside County from complications of pneumonia, said her nephew, Alfie Robinson.
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